Also you can a link to Fahlman's home page, at the bottom of which you can read his own account of "Smiley Lore." He even has a link to the original bulletin-board posting, which was tracked down through an "archeological dig" of CMU's "ancient backup tapes."

Today, Fahlman, now in his early 50s, is on leave from his research position in CMU's Department of Computer Science, working as a member of IBM's research staff. But he still lives in Pittsburgh and spends a lot of time on the CMU campus, where he pursues his interest in artificial intelligence and its applications.

Part of his focus is developing "common sense" knowledge in computer systems. As an e-mail from a spokeswoman at IBM said, "Today's computers are very good at solving specialized technical problems, but they can't begin to match the common sense of a 5-year-old. The ultimate goal of his research is to fix that."

Who better to teach computers than the guy who taught their users to lighten up?

To city residents, few things are as reassuring as the smiling face of a cop walking the beat. That was the thinking behind the Community Oriented Police program when it was started 10 years ago. The police department, however, is changing the program, assigning more officers to work on local problems. Still, Police Chief Robert W. McNeilly Jr. promises that we won't notice a difference in police presence.

Yeah, but you're still going to be compared to your sister's scoreThe Pennsylvania Board of Education today will be looking at what our schools need to do to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The goal is to test children in every grade, every year. And kids' scores, which parents will be able to track, will be measured against their own previous scores, not some average school or district score.